


Overdue

by starsoverhead



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Christmas, M/M, Mistletoe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-27
Updated: 2012-07-27
Packaged: 2017-11-10 20:53:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/470572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starsoverhead/pseuds/starsoverhead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The aftermath of the BAU Christmas party.  For the prompt, "Hotch/Reid; first kiss," from yetanothercriminalmindsfanatic on Tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Overdue

Last one in, as always, but Hotch was smiling as he finished up the paperwork that had been put aside for the Strauss-approved (Garcia’s doing, somehow), days late, Christmas party. The bullpen was festooned with garlands of faux pine, holly, and sparkling snowflakes. Sure, it was December 27th, but work had kept them busy through Christmas. This was their first chance to actually have a party. Garcia had seen that as a positive, though, because it meant that all of her decorations had been gotten on clearance.

She’d decked them all out in silly hats or reindeer-antlered headbands, handed out red-and-green boas, and had shown up in a female Santa costume with a pair of boots that made almost everyone in the room wonder how she’d walked.

He straightened the documentation, closing the last folder of the night, ready to head home when something caught his attention. There was a rustling out in the bullpen. So quiet, he thought, that the sound of his own handwriting and page-flipping had drowned it out until just now. Still, it raised his hackles. After experiences like he’d had, the idea of someone sneaking into the BAU made him go for his gun as he looked out his office window.

There was no one there. Not even one of the janitorial staff. It brought him to frown, but he wasn’t going to back down. Not with the possibility of an intruder in the bullpen. He stood, hand at his holster, just in time to see Reid’s head lift out from behind Anderson’s desk.

He let out a shaky breath, but that didn’t stop his progress toward his office’s door. “Reid? What on earth—”

“Hotch— Oh, you’re still here.” Reid’s brows lifted as he stood, obviously surprised. “I thought you’d already left.”

“Reid, what are you doing under Anderson’s desk?”

“Oh. I’m cleaning up.” He held up both hands, full of stacked cups and wayward decorations. “I mean, we have a janitorial staff, but this mess is a little out of the ordinary, you know? I mean, if I can at least get it all in a bag, they won’t hate us tomorrow.”

There was a smile tugging at Hotch’s lips and he couldn’t hide it, although it made Reid frown. “What?” the younger man asked, looking down at himself as if he was checking for a condiment that had ended up where it shouldn’t.

“Antlers,” Hotch answered, letting the smile break across his face.

Reid lifted a hand - more accurately, a wrist - to check, and sure enough he was still wearing the antlers Garcia had put on his head earlier in the evening. Rolling his eyes, he reached up to try to dislodge them, but with both hands full, the task was impossible.

“Here,” Hotch chuckled, descending the stairs to meet Reid halfway. “I’ll get it.” And he did, making himself as careful as possible while Reid ducked his head. Not for the first time, Hotch noticed how Reid blushed when he was touched - but now? Now it was a little different, and Hotch knew he could write it off to a few things. One was the letdown of adrenaline from his self-made scare. The other was that it was after a Christmas party where he’d been made aware, yet again, of how close he was to all of his teammates.

But he knew the truth of the matter. He knew how he touched Reid’s shoulder more often and more gently than any of the others. He liked being around Reid. He had for years, and it had started to become more and more obvious to him that the reasons weren’t as innocent as he’d hoped. Clearing his throat, he hung the antlers on the divider of Reid’s cubicle. “Let me give you a hand cleaning up,” Hotch offered, patting Reid’s shoulder before turning away. Maybe losing himself to finding the minute bits of party detritus would help him pull his mind away from the images that were constantly just below the level of conscious thought.

Cups and plates under and behind desks. There was a plastic fork in the copy machine and a spoon in the fax. For a moment, Hotch wondered if someone was trying to make a joke, but he only ended up chuckling to himself.

Everything seemed to be cleaning up easily enough. No spills, no icing smears anywhere they shouldn’t be - so he collected the scattered clutter, a little proud of his department for being cleaner than most would manage. He had just finished dumping what he thought would be the last armload into the trash bag when he spotted a potential source of mischief in his periphery. A wayward sprig of mistletoe was tucked into the drop ceiling in a corner that was actually innocuous - which made it all the more dangerous.

Partway to his goal of getting there to pull it down, he saw that he wasn’t the only one who had spotted it. “Think you can reach it?” he asked.

“I doubt it. These ceilings are just a little too high for me.” Now standing almost below it, Reid looked between it and his surroundings. Hotch could practically see the wheels turning in Reid’s head. “Think you could hold one of the chairs steady enough for me to stand on?”

“I think that’s the only choice we have since I don’t have a key for the janitor’s closet,” Hotch answered with a sigh.

“And me with a bad knee.” But Reid still pulled over a chair.

Hotch planted his feet to either side of a couple of the casters his hand taking hold of the seat back. “Here. Climb up, I’ll put an arm on either side—”

“Better than my plan. Okay, hold still.”

The chair gave Reid the extra height he needed to reach the mistletoe and unfasten it from the skinny rail that held up the panels. It was getting down that was always the challenge. Despite Hotch offering his hand and holding the chair as steady as he could, Reid still faltered, yelped, and it was pure instinct that had Hotch catching him as the chair rolled away like a soapbox derby car down a hill.

And that was when it happened. Aaron Hotchner was holding Spencer Reid in his arms. The mistletoe had gone flying across the room, but when it finally trickled through that no one had been hurt, that the scare had passed, both of them started to smile and then to laugh.

Hotch didn’t loosen his arms. It was too wonderful to look into his eyes, to be happy with him so close, and given how tight Reid’s arms were around his shoulders, it wasn’t only him. There were butterflies, long out of season, in his stomach, but it seemed so perfectly natural to touch his forehead to Reid’s, then follow it with the lightest brush of a kiss against his lips.

The next thing he knew, he had Reid’s long, slender fingers in his hair, soft lips on his, and he was kissing his subordinate with years of pent-up want. His vision behind his eyelids was starting to swim with golden sparkles when he drew back and saw that both of them went from surprised to smiling, but it was Spencer who spoke first.

“This,” he murmured, “is the best Christmas gift I’ve ever had.”

“Even if it’s a couple years late?” Hotch asked, lips brushing Spencer’s again.

“Just promise me it won’t be the last one.”

“I promise,” he murmured, and swiftly suited action to word.


End file.
